China possesses no exportable ideology, no civilizational proposition for the world of the kind the Soviet empire once offered. Nor does it dominate through culture, as the United States does; the world's finest talent gravitates not toward China, but toward America.
Putin's Russia has served as a perfect instrument for America to extend its influence across Europe and deepen European dependence on Washington. Russia's military aggression against Ukraine has amounted to a genuine geopolitical windfall for the United States: absent a Russian military threat, European countries would have remained energy-dependent on Moscow indefinitely.
Energy dependence, the absence of military threat, no incentive to increase defense spending, no Russian menace — and American unreliability as an ally — would have allowed Russia to achieve geopolitical dominance over Europe as early as 2026. Prior to the full-scale invasion of 2022, elites in Germany, France, and Italy were prepared to forge a continental geopolitical axis with Russia. Vladimir Putin, through his own decision, robbed Russia of that victory. De facto, his regime functions as an entirely pro-American one.
A logical question then arises: if China cannot dominate the world ideologically, and Russia only reinforces American influence, why, then, is the American empire in decline?
First, American elites have lost their consensus on both domestic and foreign policy. The rules of the game by which the establishment once operated have collapsed, and the institutional foundations on which American success was built are eroding. A majority of Americans no longer trust the legal system or state institutions. A rupture and polarization has taken hold not only within society, but within the elite itself. Some influential American oligarchs have openly argued that the "primitive masses" do not deserve democracy or a share in governance — evidence of the disintegration of the compact that once held the American establishment together.
Second, from the perspective of Chinese strategists, America's foremost advantage over China has always been its network of pro-American alliances and its masterful deployment of soft power — a resource China conspicuously lacks. Yet today's America has begun voluntarily discarding these advantages: abandoning soft power and undermining the very alliances whose credibility Washington itself is now eroding.
Third, the current American administration's drive to dismantle the liberal international order is a symptom of weakness. Within the American elite, a conviction has taken hold that the liberal international system not only no longer serves American interests, but will not allow the United States to prevail in strategic competition with China.
It is for this reason that the Trumpists have committed to constructing a "golden island" — shielded by oceans, premised on American economic, energy, and technological dominance extracted at the expense of other nations. The strategy envisions manufacturing instability across Eurasia, creating conditions under which industries and technologies migrate to a more stable America, and in which wealthy Europeans and Asians begin paying for American citizenship.
The fundamental flaw in this strategy is that without domestic unity, without recognized rules of the game, and without elite consensus on core policy questions, the transformation of the United States into a "golden island" is simply not achievable.
In certain respects, the processes unfolding in contemporary America echo the decline of the Roman Republic: the erosion of political norms and the rules governing elite conduct (what the Romans called the mos maiorum), the widening of economic inequality and the hollowing out of the middle class, populism, and the cult of personality. Leaders emerged in Rome, as they have in contemporary America, who placed personal popularity and personal loyalty above law, institutions, and established rules.
The influence of charismatic figures grows — figures who cast themselves as defenders of the people against the elite while systematically circumventing institutions. These are politicians who are, in essence, merchants of imagery, capable of trafficking in hatred. A politician who constructs a group identity for his followers — followers who regard him as a "daddy figure," a protector of ordinary people — and expertly channels their resentment against political opponents.
One must also take seriously the view held by some influential Trumpists, who regard the liberal European Union as a more dangerous rival than China. China, in their framework, is a resource competitor; the EU is an ideological competitor — and therefore the more serious challenge. Unlike China, the EU offers Americans an attractive ideology, values, and ideals, and possesses the potential to emerge in time as the leader of the free world, thereby threatening the very identity of America.
It is precisely because the EU may offer a compelling model for American adherents of liberal democracy that Trumpists intend to dismantle it through the construction of a right-wing international movement within Europe. The advocates of the "golden island" strategy are, in effect, replicating the Soviet playbook: Moscow built a left-wing international to destabilize the West by exploiting Western "useful idiots." American proponents of the right-wing international plan to do precisely the same.
What the architects of this plan apparently fail to account for is the possibility that this gambit may produce a left-wing backlash — a "left wave" — both in the United States, where societal polarization is deepening and a majority of young Americans in major cities now identify with socialism, and in Europe, where the continent's right-wing parties risk becoming politically toxic to voters because of their alignment with Washington.
Michael Pence — who, regrettably, never became President of the United States, and who remains one of the increasingly rare American figures committed to the rules of the game, to values, and to principles — identified his country's defining problem with rare precision: "It is not China that is the greatest threat to the United States, but the growing power of American ultra-leftists and ultra-rightists."